Happy Holidays from Littsburgh!
The 12 Days of Indies + The Latest from Literary Pittsburgh & more...
If you haven’t been keeping up with Littsburgh’s 12 Days of Pittsburgh’s Indie Bookstores (courtesy of Joy Givens), we’re just wrapping up our Twelfthtide celebration this week and we’re feeling especially lucky to be living in a city that has enough amazing independent bookstores for us to be able to celebrate them for twelve days straight!
And that’s not all.
Keep scrolling for more from Literary Pittsburgh.
We’ve got excerpts from In the Shadow of the Mic: Three Decades of Slam Poetry in Pittsburgh, Certain and Impossible Events by Candace Jane Opper—selected by Cheryl Strayed for the Kore Press Institute Memoir Award—and more… including lots of online author events and writing workshops just added to the calendar.
Shopping local (bookstores and authors!),
Rachel, Nick, and Katie
The Littsburgh Crew
P.S. If you’d like to help support the people behind Littsburgh while #givingbooks to a young reader in your life, we’ve got a rec for you!
Day One: City Books - “This thoughtfully curated bookstore is a continuous labor of love by store owner Arlan Hess.”
Day Two: Penguin Bookshop - “A beloved local institution, this charming shop has been stocking new books for over 90 years, and its recently renovated storefront includes generous shelf space for local authors and a lovely children’s section.”
Day Three: The Tiny Bookstore - “If you want to pick up your next reads, holiday gifts, or homebrewing supplies from a fabulously unique local business, then remember that bigger isn’t necessarily better!”
Day Four: Beyond Bedtime Books - “This space is positively brimming with used, new, rare, and antique books of all genres! However, this store has a place for everything, and the helpful staff is always willing to guide you through your latest treasure hunt.”
Day Five: Mystery Lovers Bookstore - “The polished storefront puts you in the mindset for mystery solving from the moment you slip inside, with cleverly themed window displays, slick black-and-white checkered flooring, and crisp red furnishings throughout.”
Day Six: Spark Books - “This beautiful store feels like the kind of haven only childhood can bring, with soft décor, warm lighting, and spaces where kids can sit and check out their latest treasures.”
Day Seven: Shadyside Books - “If you stop by this unique, elevated space and stroll its herringbone hardwood floors, you’ll find a well-organized trove of used books at great prices, tucked into a chic atmosphere.”
Day Eight: White Whale Bookstore - “Owners Adlai and Jill Yeomans set sail with this beautiful shop in October 2016, and it has quickly become a community hub for events and socializing as well as literature.”
Day Nine: Riverstone Bookstore - “Riverstone founder and owner Barbara Jeremiah has put together a lovely space, with plenty of natural light and a well-thought-out floorplan; the stacks are exceptionally easy to navigate, including a sizeable children’s section.”
Day Ten: Amazing Books & Records - “As the name indicates, the stores stock literature and music alike, in eye-popping quantities. Between both stores, their backroom stock, and their online listings, Amazing Books & Records offers almost 60,000 books.”
Day Eleven: Classic Lines - “Stroll down Forbes Avenue and stop when you reach the cheerful turquoise awning outside our latest featured bookstore. This 1,600-square-foot store has been around for six years, and it’s quickly turned into a staple spot for the neighbors of Squirrel Hill and beyond…”
Day Twelve: City of Asylum Bookstore - “This bookstore is the project of City of Asylum Pittsburgh, a nonprofit organization that provides sanctuary and support to endangered writers facing intolerance of their political beliefs or expressions. All sales in the bookstore directly support the nonprofit, its Exiled Writers-in-Residence, and its community programs to promote cross-cultural exchange.”
In the Shadow of the Mic: Three Decades of Slam Poetry in Pittsburgh
“In the Shadow of the Mic: Three Decades of Slam Poetry in Pittsburgh celebrates the history, culture, and community of the Steel City Slam, from its founding in the early ’90s to present day. In this collection, editors Jesse Welch and PEN America Literary Award–winning writer Adriana E. Ramírez present twenty-nine poems from thirty spoken word artists, including Stacey Waite, Davon Clark, and Leslie Ezra Smith, who are representative of the life and breadth of three decades of competitive slam poetry in Pittsburgh…”
Certain and Impossible Events by Candace Jane Opper
“Certain and Impossible Events orbits the death of a fourteen-year-old boy who shot and killed himself a week after Kurt Cobain’s suicide had become international news. Haunted by the hazy circumstances around her classmate’s death, Candace Jane Opper takes a kaleidoscopic lens to the cultural history of suicide in America, unearthing an invisible network and revealing the ways that no individual suicide—well-known or hardly documented—exists in a vacuum. Fusing personal narrative with history and science, Opper interrogates the ways suicide is handed down to us—from literature to YouTube, from middle school health class to sociological study, from the immutability of objects to the fluidity of oral history. In this candid and unsentimental epistolary essay, Opper invites us into her decades-long obsession with a boy she barely knew, creating space for herself and her readers to embrace a radical kind of unforgetting.”
A Luke of All Ages and Fire and Ice: Two Novellas by Mark Saba
“These finely-crafted, moving novellas beckon us on through winding corridors of human consciousness and human hearts. In prose both lean and lyrical, Mark Saba offers intimate portraits of characters compelled to plumb the meanings of faith, loss, and the intensities of that extraordinary thing, an ordinary life.”
December 9, 2020: Wednesday Webinars with Creative Nonfiction: They Walk! They Talk! Secrets to Writing Engaging Characters with Vivid Dialogue with Dinty Moore @ Online More information
December 9, 2020: Online: An Evening with Marie Benedict! @ Online More information
December 9, 2020: On Confederate Statues in America: Connor Towne O'Neill @ Online More information
December 10, 2020: Virtual Stories with Santa (Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens) @ Online More information
December 10, 2020: Virtual Author Visit with Deesha Philyaw (Mt. Lebanon Public Library) @ Online More information
December 10, 2020: Online Reading w/ Mason Jar Press & Barrelhouse: Zaccagnino, Myers, & Lourette @ Online More information
December 11, 2020: Prime Stage Theatre (Online): One Christmas Carol @ Online More information
December 11, 2020: Poetry Book Launch: Hallelujah Science by Kelli Stevens Kane w/ Smith, Ramírez, Tallie! @ Online More information
December 12, 2020: Sleuths & Sidekicks: A Virtual Event @ Online More information
December 12, 2020: "Black in the Middle" Virtual Book Conversation Series: Pt. 1, "Home" @ Online More information
December 13, 2020: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Lauren Tarshis (Free & Online!) @ Online More information
December 15, 2020: Virtual Stories with Santa (Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens) @ Online More information
December 16, 2020: Wednesday Webinars with Creative Nonfiction: How to Navigate the Lit Mag Landscape and Find the Right Home for Your Work @ Online More information
December 16, 2020: "Black in the Middle" Virtual Book Conversation Series: Pt. 2, "Past" @ Online More information
December 18, 2020: Virtual Stories with Santa (Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens) @ Online More information
December 19, 2020: Between Poetry and Performance: Choreopoems as an Avenue for Joy with Monica Prince (Online) @ Online More information
December 22, 2020: Virtual Stories with Santa (Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens) @ Online More information
December 22, 2020: Whitehall Public Library: Choose Your Own Adventure Book Club! (Online) @ Online More information
December 22, 2020: Steel City Slam Online Cover Show via Zoom @ Online More information
December 28, 2020: Riverstone December Book Club (Online) @ Online More information
January 9, 2021: 4-Week Writing Workshop: Honey is the Knife w/ Hannah Eko @ Online More information
January 10, 2021: Free Association Reading Series presented by City of Asylum (Online) @ Online More information
January 11, 2021: Solving the Mystery: Understanding Kidlit Mysteries and How to Write Them with author Jan Fields (SCBWI) @ Online More information
January 16, 2021: "Black in the Middle" Virtual Book Conversation Series: Pt. 3, "Now" @ Online More information
January 18, 2021: Freehof Book and Author Series (Online, Hosted by Women of Rodef Shalom) @ Online More information
January 18, 2021: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: David Treuer (Virtual Access) @ Online More information
January 20, 2021: In the Shadow of the Mic: Three Decades of Slam Poetry in Pittsburgh @ Online More information
January 21, 2021: Penguin Evening Readers (Online) @ Online More information
January 24, 2021: Reading Into History Virtual Family Book Club: Around the World @ Online More information
January 25, 2021: Riverstone January Book Club (Online) @ Online More information
January 27, 2021: Well-Read Black Girl Book Club (Online) @ Online More information
January 28, 2021: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Laurie Halse Anderson (Free & Online!) @ Online More information
February 2, 2021: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Karen Russell (Virtual Access) @ Online More information
February 4, 2021: Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series Online: An Evening of Reading and Conversation with Music Journalists Will Hermes and Amanda Petrusich @ Online More information
February 6, 2021: 1-Day Writing Workshop: Nonfiction and the Scene w/ Steffan Triplett @ Online More information
February 7, 2021: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Pam Muñoz Ryan (Free & Online!) @ Online More information
February 13, 2021: 4-Week Writing Workshop: Stories of History w/ Katie Booth @ Online More information
February 17, 2021: A Virtual Conversation with Rebecca Sacks More information
February 24, 2021: Well-Read Black Girl Book Club (Online) @ Online More information
March 11, 2021: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Naomi Shihab Nye (Free & Online!) @ Online More information
March 20, 2021: 4-Week Writing Workshop: Write F*cking Now w/ Monica Prince @ Online More information
March 22, 2021: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Ocean Vuong (Virtual Access) @ Online More information
March 24, 2021: Well-Read Black Girl Book Club (Online) @ Online More information
March 25, 2021: Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series Online: An Evening of Poetry and Conversation with Cecilia Vicuña and Rosa Alcalá @ Online More information
March 30, 2021: Tamara Winfrey Harris, author of LETTERS TO BLACK GIRLS in conversation with Rochelle Riley @ Online More information
April 5, 2021: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Bernardine Evaristo (Virtual Access) @ Online More information
April 24, 2021: 4-Week (Online) Writing Workshop: About Poetry: A Crash Course w/ Jessica Fischoff @ Online More information